Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Morocco and Wikileaks - new material

Any doubts about the Spanish Government's attitude to the ongoing dispute in the Moroccan Sahara region are cleared up by the latest documents provided by Wikileaks. Right from the start the Spanish Government backed a proposal to turn Sahara into an autonomous community within Morocco. The leaked telegrams sent between Embassies in the States, Madrid, Rabat and Paris and uncovered by Wikileaks were published in Spanish newspaper El Pais on Tuesday.

In 2006, the then Foreign Affairs Minister, Miguel Ángel Moratinos, sent a proposal - on un-headed paper, according to the paper - suggesting that talks cease to be about independence and sovereignty (for the Sahrawis) and instead about backing "regionalization, autonomy and self-government".

"A similar solution to the one offered by Spain to Catalonia," proposed Moratinos, while Spanish civil servants agreed that independence was not a realistic option.

When in 2007 Morocco presented its document proposing autonomy for Sahara, according to the leaked communications Moratinos was unsatisfied with the result and asked for more generosity on the part of the Moroccans. The same telegrams revealed that Spanish Diplomacy considered that the situation was made more difficult by the strength of the French pro-Moroccan stance.

3 comments:

Netanyahu explains why there are supposedly so few leaks about Israel:http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/netanyahu-wikileaks-cables-prove-israel-is-right-on-iran-1.327653

"The Israeli state, being the world's experts on intelligence (!), identified the vulnerability of the US diplomatic channels, i.e. that over 300,000 people (or was it 2 million) had access to classified information, and foresaw that it was just a question of time before the leaks occurred. They chose to avoid communicating via these channels."

WikiLeaks will release cables concerning Israel, the Second Lebanon War and the Mabhouh assassination in the next six months, its founder Julian Assange said in an interview with Al Jazeera on Wednesday.

Assange said only a small number of documents related to Israel have been published so far because newspapers in the West that had exclusive rights to publish the material were hesitant to publish sensitive information about Israel, the Qatari newspaper The Peninsula reported, citing the Al Jazeera interview.

“The Guardian, El-Pais and Le Monde have published only two percent of the files related to Israel due to the sensitive relations between Germany, France and Israel. Even The New York Times could not publish more due to the sensitivities related to the Jewish community in the US,” he added.

On the other hand:

Private cables exposed by WikiLeaks revealed earlier this week that Arab leaders had urged the US to end Iran's nuclear program by force if necessary. The first of the world's leaders to address this cable was Israeli PM Netanyahu, who said Monday that "if the leaders make these statements publically there will be a significant change. When leaders are willing to tell their people the truth it promotes peace." The prime minister said, adding that "peace based on truth has a lasting chance."

In an interview with Time Magazine, the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assane defended publication of classified materials by saying the Israeli PM believes making privately held beliefs public will 'lead to an increase in the peace process, particularly in relation to Iran'

Assange said the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "believes that the result of this publication, which makes the sentiments of many privately held beliefs public… will lead to some kind of increase in the peace process in the Middle East and particularly in relation to Iran". Assange complimented Netanyahu by saying he is "not a naïve man" and "a sophisticated politician".

What do guitars, lollies, lipstick, tamagotchis, padded bras, pornography, movies, opium, Ever Quest, and 98% of any Australian newspaper in common? They are all technologies of emmotional manipulation which distort our perceptions for the benefit of their masters. Language centres in our neocortex may claim to "know" they are fake, but these words only feebly suppress those primitive areas of the brain which give rise to our feelings, colour our memories and command our attention. These non-verbal processing regions of the brain have not evolved to deal such sensory sophistry. For them, sensing is believing....

Such deceptions, previously known as "Art", as in "Artifice" or "Artful" have a long history of successful human parasitation. But the industrial control of and rapid advances in the ability to successfully falsify sense data has no historical analog. I have previously argued that a possible explanation for the Fermi Paradox (why don't there seem to be any aliens, dude) is the existence of a developmental ceiling created by technological advances flowing into the perceptual manipulation industry till it gobbles up through diversion and wealth destruction all economic growth.

The credulous will not inherit the earth, but they'll get to play a game where they do. A beautiful reality and a beautiful dream.

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